The Carnegie Corporation and Immigration: How a Noble Vision Lost Its Way

Jerry Kammer, a senior research fellow at CIS, won many awards in his 30 years as a journalist. In 2006 he received a Pulitzer Prize and the George Polk Award for his work in helping uncover the bribery scandal whose central figure was Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. His work in Mexico for the Arizona Republic was honored with the 1989 Robert F. Kennedy Award for humanitarian journalism.

Despite a professed commitment to inform and expand democratic discussion, the foundation’s grantmaking on immigration has become dogmatic and polarizing. Ideological rigidity has trumped its mission to advance knowledge and understanding.

On October 14, 2010, a story on many public radio stations around the country told of a new report that recent immigrants and their children had doubled their presence in the U.S. electorate between 1996 and 2008, totaling 10 percent of registered voters.1

The story also included a warning. “Candidates — especially those in close elections — would do well to take heed,” said Elizabeth Wynne Johnson of Capitol News Connection, the news service that produced the story.

Johnson’s comment set up another. Walter Ewing of the Immigration Policy Center, which issued the report, added that the new voters “are not going to take very kindly to political rhetoric that demonizes immigrants because that’s going to be either themselves or their parents.”

The story provided a measure not only of the growing power of voters directly connected to the immigrant experience, but also of the pervasive role in the politics of immigration played by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Carnegie grants were instrumental at every level of the story.

Carnegie provides funding to Capitol News Connection.2 It also funds the Immigration Policy Center, the research arm of the American Immigration Council, which describes itself as seeking to “strengthen America by honoring our immigrant history and shaping how Americans think and act toward immigration now and in the future.”3 It is an affiliate of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The Carnegie Corporation’s own magazine reported in the fall of 2008 that during the previous seven years the foundation had spent $35 million on “immigrant civic integration,”4 a major focus of which has been to encourage immigrants to naturalize, register, and vote. Since that time, according to an examination of Carnegie’s grants database, the corporation has directed at least $22 million more to that effort.

Immigrant advocates, many also supported by Carnegie, frequently remind politicians that the growth of the Latino electorate means that they should support the expansive set of immigration policies known as “comprehensive immigration reform” or CIR.

As immigration activist Frank Sharry, another recipient of Carnegie funding, put it in December 2010, Republicans are “on the path to political suicide with the fastest-growing group of new voters in the nation”5 because of their resistance to CIR.

In sum, Carnegie is funding not only efforts to enroll immigrants as voters, but also a report on the effectiveness of that effort by an organization that advocates CIR. It also supports news coverage that has sternly warned politicians of the electoral consequences of that effort.

This confluence of Carnegie-supported projects offers a glimpse into the foundation’s wide-ranging efforts to promote passage of “comprehensive immigration reform.” While media reports on CIR have focused on the provision to grant amnesty to nearly all illegal immigrants, they have often ignored the fact that the proposal would also dramatically widen channels of legal immigration, especially of low-wage immigrants from Latin America eagerly sought by American employers, ethnic interest groups like the National Council of La Raza, and service industry unions.

Carnegie is not unique in its activism. It is part of a network of liberal foundations — including the Ford Foundation, Open Society Institute, Atlantic Philanthropies, the Tides Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation — that often fund the same activist organizations’ projects.

Efforts to encourage immigrant integration often strengthen civic culture and enrich our legacy as a nation of immigrants. In this sense it is appropriate that Carnegie funds its immigration initiatives through its Strengthening U.S. Democracy program.

But Carnegie’s activism on behalf of illegal immigrants has taken on a such a strident, polarizing, and partisan character that it betrays the mission it received from its benefactor, legendary steel baron and Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie.

While the Carnegie Corporation claims to be committed to enriching democratic discussion on complex issues, its immigration activism has funded smear campaigns that explicitly seek to narrow the national discussion by demonizing those who dissent from CIR.

The principal targets of Carnegie grantees are the Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA, and the Center for Immigration Studies.

Carnegie’s Mission

The Carnegie Corporation is part of the philanthropic legacy of Andrew Carnegie, who in 1901 sold his major business interests to J.P. Morgan for $480 million, about $12.5 billion in today’s dollars.

In 1911, Carnegie created the first grant-making foundation, which he named the Carnegie Corporation of New York. It is one of many philanthropic organizations that bear his name. He envisioned an organization that would accomplish “real and permanent good” and promote “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding.”6

In its century of existence, the Carnegie Corporation has funded many ambitious initiatives. Perhaps best known is its funding of thousands of community libraries, which Andrew Carnegie regarded as the cradle of democracy. The foundation also has funded important research in a broad range of scholarly and policy fields, from nuclear non-proliferation, to public television, to the search for new forms of journalism in the age of the Internet. Carnegie-funded research helped lead the way to the establishment of Head Start and nurtured the creation of Public Television’s Sesame Street.

In many ways the foundation has remained true to Carnegie’s vision, constructively pursuing the work described in 1964 by then-president John Gardner, who said the role of a foundation was “to make money go a long way in the service of creativity and constructive change.”7

Current Carnegie president Vartan Gregorian has declared his determination to inform and expand the public discussion of important national issues. Envisioning a role for the foundation in developing the forum for democratic debate, he wrote:

“The Corporation is committed to the idea of investing in a wide range of both competing and complementary scholars and institutions as one way we can increase and help to create knowledge. Our goal is to augment the sources of knowledge that may be drawn upon to inform American leaders and citizens about the issues on the nation’s agenda, and thus enrich discussion and debate about them.”8

But Carnegie funding on immigration policy has moved sharply away from this commitment. Indeed, Carnegie’s grantmaking on immigration policy and programs has exacerbated a problem described by New York Times columnist David Brooks, who lamented that “many people live in information cocoons in which they only talk to members of their own party and read blogs of their own sect.”9

Carnegie has funded many organizations that promote passage of “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation, attack its critics, and conduct legal challenges to enforcement of immigration law.

Among the activist organizations Carnegie has supported are the National Council of La Raza, America’s Voice, the National Immigration Forum, the Center for Community Change and its Fair Immigration Reform Network, the Center for New Community, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Much Carnegie-supported work involves admirable efforts to help naturalized immigrants participate in the civic life of the nation. Such programs honor the best traditions of host communities reaching out to assist newcomers in the often-jarring transition to their new country and new community. Advocacy for comprehensive immigration reform legislation also has a legitimate place in the national debate.

But Carnegie-supported campaigns to demonize and delegitimize those who disagree with CIR have been poisoning the atmosphere for civil discussion that fosters the effort to find common ground and reach compromise. Such harmful efforts highlight a concern acknowledged by Vartan Gregorian, who wrote:

“Philanthropies bear heavy societal responsibilities by virtue of their wealth, their central role in our civil society, and their power to help, or unintentionally, to harm. They have a moral responsibility to see that this power is used openly, wisely and responsibly in upholding society’s values rather than subverting them.”10

Carnegie’s work on immigration policy takes on added public policy significance because of a concern raised in a 1995 article in the New Republic about the increasing politicization of U.S. foundations. The article included this observation:

“Foundations enjoy their present tax-free moorings because they claim to operate as a nonpartisan force dedicated to the pursuit of innovative solutions to our pressing social ills, sheltered from the shifting partisan winds. The preponderance of foundation grants to advocacy groups, however, suggests that foundations are less devoted to the reasoned pursuit of the public good than to the multiculturalist dogmas propounded by their staff.”11

An Advocacy Echo Chamber

Despite Carnegie’s professed open-mindedness, its views on immigration policy are shaped in a remarkably closed world of like-minded advocates. Consider the June 2010 convention of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR), a network of foundations and the 2008 recipient of a $300,000 Carnegie grant that the foundation said would “increase support for immigrant integration.”12

It is interesting to review the program for the 2010 GCIR convention in New York. It listed four outspoken advocates of CIR as the panelists for a discussion of “What’s the status of the debate? What has to happen for reform to pass this year?”13

The panelists were: New York Times editorial writer Lawrence Downes,14 whose work combines warm compassion for illegal immigration with chilly disdain for those critical of its cumulative effects; Cecilia Munoz, the director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Relations and a former vice president of the National Council of La Raza; and representatives of two recipients of multiple Carnegie grants to promote CIR and other immigrant rights: Angela Kelley of the Center for American Progress, and Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change.

Ironically, Downes’ participation in the event helped make it an example of a phenomenon lamented not only by columnist David Brooks but also by Times executive editor Bill Keller, who said, “We now live in a world where, because you can select your news diet, it’s entirely possible to put together a diet of information from sources that will confirm all of your prejudices. So you can feel like a well informed person without ever encountering an argument that challenges your prejudices.”15

Keller was speaking about the tendency of like-minded individuals to isolate themselves in closed communities that become so convinced of the rightness of their beliefs that they disdain those who disagree as small-minded or even mean-spirited. The Carnegie Corporation and many of its grantees fit the pattern. So does the New York Times editorial page, which Downes has helped to move far from the measured concern about illegal immigration that was expressed in the 1983 editorial that offered this opinion:

“For reasons of vitality, humanity, and history, America wants and needs immigrants. What it does not need is such an uncontrollable flood of illegal migrants that it tries public patience and foments a backlash against all newcomers. That’s the genuine danger … .”16

The program for the same GCIR event listed two discussants on the topic of “Greenwashing: The Infiltration of Anti-Immigrant Forces into the Environmental Movement.” The discussants were Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center and Eric Ward of the Center for New Community. Both organizations have flagrantly distorted the views of those who oppose CIR, accusing them of bigotry and xenophobia.

The GCIR program included this preview: “Anti-immigrant forces have long targeted their messaging and organizing at the environmental movement and white progressives. Learn about their latest activities — and what funders can do to counter these activities.”17

The program included no member of any progressive organizations whose advocacy of reduced immigration is based on environmental or population concerns, or indeed any other concerns. Nor did it include a representative of any organization that proposes limits on immigration.

Geraldine Mannion

The Carnegie official most responsible for immigration grantmaking is Geraldine Mannion. An immigrant herself, having come to the United States with her parents from Ireland when she was a small girl, Mannion has worked some 30 years at Carnegie, where she now directs the U.S. Democracy program.

In 2010, Vartan Gregorian praised Mannion for her “dedication to her work, her passion about the missions of the organizations she supports, her deep and abiding belief in the vitality of democracy, and her fierce determination to help the grantees she partners with.” Gregorian’s praise came as Mannion was named by the NonProfit Times, a trade publication, as one of the nation’s most influential non profit executives.18

Mannion’s commitment to immigrant causes extends far beyond her work at Carnegie. She is a member of the board of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, the organization that received the $300,000 grant in 2008. She co-founded the Four Freedoms Fund (FFF), a funding collaborative that since 2003 has provided $36 million in grants to grassroots groups working in 33 states to advance immigrant rights and integration.19 Since 2007, Carnegie has funded FFF with grants totaling $20,250,000.

For their work with the Fund, Mannion and co-founder Taryn Higashi received the Council on Foundations’ Robert W. Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking. They used the award money to establish The Freedom From Fear Award to honor persons “who commit extraordinary acts of courage on behalf of immigrants and refugees.”20

The list of those who joined Mannion as sponsors of the National Immigration Forum’s “Keepers of the American Dream” awards dinner at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel in 2007 illustrates the left-right coalition that has formed to promote CIR. It included the National Council of La Raza, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Service Employees International Union, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Restaurant Association, the National Council of Agricultural Employers, the Western Growers, the National Roofing Contractors Association, and Western Union.21

An examination of the available record, including Carnegie publications and grant databases, makes clear that in her advocacy for immigrant rights, Mannion does not distinguish between immigrants who follow U.S. immigration laws and thus are already on a path to citizenship and those who have violated the law but still seek that privilege.

“The Carnegie Corporation of New York unequivocally supports the provision of a pathway to citizenship for immigrants and assistance to help new arrivals more fully participate in the civic, social, and economic life of their communities,” Mannion said in a written response to questions submitted to her for this report. “All our immigrant integration work is rooted in this belief.”22

Mannion told The Carnegie Reporter magazine, “The contribution that immigrants make to the strength of American democracy and the richness of its national life is immeasurable. But their ability to fully integrate into our society is being challenged by an immigration system that is clearly broken.”23

Mannion’s sincerity and good intentions are clear. Like other committed supporters of CIR, she believes that the way to fix the system is to pass legislation that would expand legal immigration and provide legal status to illegal immigrants. She has directed tens of millions of Carnegie dollars to support that effort, which has received tens of millions more from other groups in which she is active.

Limiting Immigration: A ‘Radical’ Idea?

The published description of a 2007 Carnegie grant reflects Mannion’s beliefs regarding immigration policy. It accompanied a grant of $200,000 to the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based organization whose website declares a mission “to build community, justice, and equality.” In the context of the immigration debate this signals CNC’s conviction that illegal immigrants should be granted the same rights as legal immigrants.24

Carnegie reported that the money would finance a national media campaign to inform the public about “anti-immigrant groups.” The grant description expressed alarm at those who “support more radical goals than simply enforcing the current immigration laws — for example, limiting legal immigration as well.”25

This characterization of efforts to hold immigration within prescribed limits as “radical” illustrates not only Carnegie’s expansionist aspirations, but also its effort to delegitimize concerns that have long been a fixture of mainstream policy proposals.

Consider the position of former Rep. Barbara Jordan, an icon of the American civil rights movement, who in the 1990s chaired the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. The commission, which was established by Congress to study immigration and suggest policy changes, recommended that annual admissions of new immigrants first be increased to clear backlogs of those already approved. It recommended that admissions then be reduced to 550,000, down from the then-prevailing level of 800,000. It also called for a computerized registry connected to the Social Security system that would verify legal status for workers.

In contrast to many advocates of expansionist immigration policy, Jordan did not see immigration as such an undiluted blessing that only a bigoted, nativist fringe would want to restrict it. Indeed, Jordan believed that immigration must be restricted in order to provide the civic and economic space for it to be successful.

Said Jordan, “If we are to preserve our immigration tradition and our ability to say yes to so many of those who seek entry, we must also have the strength to say no where we must.”26

Jordan was alarmed at illegal immigration. As the Washington Post reported, her commission in 1994 “concluded that illegal immigration into the United States had reached a point that required urgent attention and an aggressive crackdown by authorities.”27 In its 1994 report to Congress, the Jordan Commission asserted that “it is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest.”28

Since that time, efforts to pass laws that would have adopted Jordan’s recommendations have been thwarted by the left-right coalition of interest groups that Carnegie has done so much to finance.

Like many advocates of expansive policy, Mannion invokes the U.S. legacy as “a nation of immigrants.” But even in the book that took that motto as its title, then-senator John F. Kennedy recognized the value of setting policy in the broad national interest, rather than in the interest of those groups who stood to gain from it.

“There is, of course, a legitimate argument for some limitation upon immigration,” Kennedy wrote. “We no longer need settlers for virgin lands, and our economy is expanding more slowly than in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”29

Kennedy’s book was written in 1958, a year in which 253,000 immigrants came to the United States, having qualified for the green cards that grant permanent residence.

In the decades since, legal immigration has soared, from an annual average of 322,000 in the decade of the sixties, to 449,000 in the seventies, to 734,000 in the eighties, to 901,000 in the nineties, to nearly a million in the decade that has just ended.30

Those increases are the result of decisions by Congress, at the urging of the expansionist coalition. The coalition has been successful not only at keeping the number high but also at ensuring that the great majority of visas are issued not on the basis of skill or talent but on the basis of a relationship with someone who is already here. Family connections are the principal standard.

And, of course, illegal immigration has grown tremendously, highlighting a national failure that was decried in 1981 by the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy, which held nationwide hearings under the direction of the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame and former head of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

“If U.S. immigration policy is to serve this nation’s interests, it must be enforced effectively,’’ Hesburgh wrote in his introduction to the commission’s final report. “This nation has a responsibility to its people — citizens and permanent residents — and failure to enforce immigration law means not living up to that responsibility.”31

The commission wanted to strike a balance that was both pragmatic and humane. It recommended amnesty for illegal immigrants and called for firm action to stop future illegal flows. Hesburgh said this would close the “back door” of illegal immigration in order to maintain public support for keeping open the “front door” of legal immigration.

The Hesburgh Commission recommendations helped produce the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which combined amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants with a promise of firm action to cut off future illegal flows with criminal sanctions for employers who knowingly hired illegal immigrants. The amnesty worked. Some three million unlawful residents received legal status. The promised enforcement failed, in large part because of resistance from employers and ethnic organizations such as the National Council of La Raza. As journalist Roberto Suro would note, NCLR “fought employer sanctions at every turn.”32

Now, 25 years after IRCA, Carnegie and many of its grantees are seeking another amnesty. The Carnegie Reporter began a 2008 article on the campaign for “comprehensive immigration reform” with a description of the current situation and a prescription for federal action from which the word “enforcement” is conspicuously absent:

“An estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants live within the United States and about 300,000 people join their ranks annually, making it increasingly urgent to address the issue of immigration in a way that is both legal and compassionate and that provides a path to citizenship, protects workers from exploitation, reunites families, and promotes civic participation.”33

Carnegie’s promotion of civic participation includes its funding of efforts by the Center for Community Change to oppose enforcement of immigration law.

One prominent CCC campaign uses text-messages to generate calls to Congress. For example, on February 10, 2011, when the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the E-Verify system, a computer-based federal program used by employers to determine whether someone is authorized to work in the United States, participants were instructed to call members of Congress and “Say No” to E-Verify. Participants were also told via phone message that “E-Verify would be a disaster for the economy and for American workers” and “drive even more undocumented workers into the shadows ... and put the jobs of ALL Americans at risk.”

Carnegie explained its support for such efforts in its description of a $1 million grant to CCC in 2010. The foundation reported that the grant was intended to “help immigrants advocate for their needs and participate effectively in civic life.”

Carnegie and the Cato Institute

Carnegie’s enthusiasm for expansive immigration has inevitably meant that most of its grants have been channeled to such explicitly liberal organizations as the National Council of La Raza, the National Immigration Forum, and the Center for New Community.

But Carnegie has also supported the work of the libertarian Cato Institute. A 2007 grant funded Cato to conduct “a public education campaign on immigration issues.”34 The following year another grant helped Cato promote a book by Wall Street Journal editorial writer Jason Riley. The book is titled: Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders.35

Carnegie’s own description of the Cato grant observed that in the effort to promote CIR, “There is a particular need to build alliances among nontraditional allies, particularly those on the political right.”36

But Carnegie has shown no interest in promoting dialogue between those on opposite sides of the CIR debate. It has not sought to encourage efforts to develop a compromise between those concerned about the downside of mass immigration, especially of the unskilled and poorly educated, and those who call for increased numbers of immigrants without regard to their human capital.

Such a compromise could be informed by the work of immigration scholar and law professor Peter H. Schuck, who has written that the United States “desperately needs what so many immigrants possess — optimism and energy, orientation to the future, faith in education as the ladder … .” But Schuck adds this caveat: “We must reform immigration policy to meet our changing needs. In particular, policy should assure that a larger share of immigration flow consists of individuals who are most likely to succeed in the American economy of the twenty-first century.”37

A Narrow View of Public Opinion

In 2008, Geraldine Mannion expressed optimism about the prospects for “comprehensive immigration reform” in Congress. She cited public opinion polls that showed widespread support for a policy that would provide a path to legalization for illegal immigrants.38

But Mannion’s observation omitted an important fact. Poll results showed that such expressions of support were often conditioned upon a parallel commitment to provide strict enforcement of immigration laws.39

The public support for legalization coupled with enforcement suggests there is room for a policy compromise that would give immigration advocacy organizations the sweeping legalization that has been their central aim while providing others with the limitations on future flows that they have long pursued.

But rather than encourage efforts to seek such a middle ground, Carnegie continues to finance, and therefore to facilitate, the expansionist dreams of its grantees, who routinely label those who want less immigration as “anti-immigrant.” Carnegie and other liberal foundations have been indispensable to the expansionists’ success in stifling recommendations of both the Hesburgh and Jordan commissions.

One of the most enthusiastic congressional advocates of CIR is Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, a Democrat who depended on new Latino voters to help him to victory in a hard-fought 2010 election against Republican Sharon Angle, a leader of the Tea Party movement.

“Latino citizens responded to Majority Leader Harry Reid’s aggressive pursuit of immigration reform by voting for him in overwhelming numbers,” said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Illinois and one of the most active congressional advocates of CIR.40

Reid is a convert to CIR. In 1993 he introduced a bill he called The Immigration Stabilization Act, to reduce immigration to an annual level of 300,000. “We are not going to solve the problem unless we are honest with ourselves,” he said. “We can’t afford to absorb one million new immigrants each year.”42

In 1994, Reid complained that “the federal government has been grossly irresponsible in its neglect of mounting immigration problems.” He added: “Unprecedented demands are being placed on job markets, schools, hospitals, police, social safety nets, infrastructure, and natural resources. Unlimited new arrivals pressuring these systems threaten to overwhelm them.”43

Despite Reid’s change of course to support expansive immigration policy, its advocates lean against a stiff headwind of public opinion. Opinion polls have long showed broad support for reducing immigration.

As the Christian Science Monitor reported in 2006, “No public opinion poll in the past 50 years has found a majority of Americans favoring increased immigration.”44 And as Harvard’s Christopher Jencks, a prominent progressive intellectual, noted in 2001, “Since the early 1980s well over half of all Americans have wanted to reduce the flow of immigrants.”45

Jencks examined the issue against the background of demographic projections that warned that immigration had become so intense that it could result in a doubling of the nation’s population within 50 years, to more than a half billion people.

Wrote Jencks: “America’s current immigration policy is a vast social experiment … . It involves two gambles. First, we are betting that rapid population growth will have no significant adverse effect on the quality of our descendants’ lives. Second, we are betting that we can admit millions of unskilled immigrants to do our dirty work without creating a second generation whose members will have the same problems as the children of the American-born workers who do such jobs.”

Jencks offered this cautionary note: “The United States may be able to double its population without lowering the quality of its citizens’ lives, but the odds of its doing so would surely be better if it proceeded more slowly.”

Similar concerns prompted liberal icons Gaylord Nelson and David Brower to push for immigration policies aimed at reducing population growth.46 They have also prompted the formation of groups such as Progressives for Immigration Reform and Apply the Brakes. Moreover, they are core concerns of such restrictionist groups as FAIR, NumbersUSA, and the Center for Immigration Studies, all of which have been denounced as “hate groups,” and “bigots” and “white nationalists” by organizations funded by Carnegie, ostensibly to provide public communications and public education on immigration policy.

The Carnegie Reporter, the foundation’s official magazine, hailed America’s Voice, a recipient of $6.5 million in Carnegie funding, as “a key part of the communication efforts of immigration reform.”47 America’s Voice used its Carnegie funding to finance a particularly harsh set of attacks on those opposed to “comprehensive immigration reform.” We will consider that effort later in this report.

Immigration and the Social Divide

Outside the framework of its immigration work, the Carnegie Corporation has long expressed concern about the growing gap in the United States between the rich and the poor. Its 2000 annual report noted: “The income gap poses troubling implications for the health of American democracy, especially in its ability to renew itself up from the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.”48

But Carnegie does not appear to believe there is a connection between this widening gap and the expansionist immigration policy of recent decades. The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson has written pointedly on this topic.

“Since 1990, about 90 percent of the increase in people living below the government’s poverty lines has come among Hispanics,” Samuelson wrote in 2006. “That has to be mainly immigrants and their U.S.-born children … . Assimilation takes time. The big difference between today’s Hispanic inflows and past immigration waves is that those stopped. History or restrictive laws intervened. There was time for newcomers to adapt. Left alone, there’s no obvious reason why the present Hispanic immigration should even pause. Today’s unskilled arrivals make it harder for yesterday’s to get ahead. The two compete.”49

From that reality, Samuelson drew this lesson: “There’s a paradox. To make immigration succeed, we need to curb some immigration.”

Unfortunately, the Carnegie Corporation has ignored such concerns or sought to marginalize them. Given its ample financial resources and its expressed commitment to fostering debate of complex national issues, Carnegie’s avoidance of these issues is puzzling. It suggests that ideological rigidity and willful blindness have prevailed in Carnegie grantmaking. Carnegie’s enthusiasm for CIR and its characterization of efforts to limit immigration as “radical” leave no room for liberals or progressives who have concluded that immigration should be managed so as to discourage the creation of a new underclass likely to be stuck at the bottom rungs of an economy that is losing many of its middle rungs.

Many prominent observers of this kind, who are supportive of immigration but not constricted by rigid ideology, acknowledge issues and problems that Carnegie has not recognized.

Consider these twin observations in a recent book by economists Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny:

“Immigration boosts the U.S. economy, spurs innovation, enhances productivity, benefits consumers by keeping prices low, and enriches our society and culture. But current immigrant flows are disproportionately low-skilled and unauthorized, which leads to adverse effects on the earnings of competing native workers. It also creates an adverse fiscal impact, with low-wage immigrants receiving more in public services than they pay in taxes, on average.”50

Consider Sonia Nazario, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting for the Los Angeles Times in 2003 became the book Enrique’s Journey.51 It is a gripping, beautifully written tale of two illegal immigrants from Honduras — a mother who came north to support her children and the son who suffered terribly on his long journey to find her years later. It is a powerful reminder that all migrants, whether they enter the United States legally or illegally, have a story and fundamental human dignity that must be respected.

But it also concludes that the capacity of any country to accept migrants, especially the poorly educated and unskilled, is limited by concerns that must not be ignored. Here are excerpts from Nazario’s reporting on three concerns:

Social Justice: “Those hardest hit by the influx of immigrants are disadvantaged native-born minorities who don’t have a high school degree — namely, African Americans and previous waves of Latino immigrants. They must compete for the same low-end jobs immigrants take.”52

Safety Net Strain: “Compared to native households, immigrant families from Latin America are nearly three times as likely to receive government welfare benefits.”53

Increased Poverty: “In Los Angeles County, the surge in immigrants helped cause the poverty rate to double, to 25 percent, between 1980 and 1997.”54

Nazario’s reporting – compassionate, probing, and clear-eyed — demonstrates a commitment to advancing public knowledge and understanding of immigration that contrasts sharply with Carnegie’s one-sided efforts. Nazario recognized that the story cannot be told, nor the issue fully discussed, without acknowledging immigration’s costs and strains as well as its beauties and benefits.

A Dubious Assertion: ‘Our Grantees Are Asking the Questions’

Far from pursuing the open-minded, far-ranging, and probing philanthropy that Andrew Carnegie intended and that Vartan Gregorian claims to advocate, Carnegie spends its millions exclusively on the expansionist side of the immigration debate

For example, the Immigration Policy Center, whose work was featured in the Capitol News Connection radio report about how new voters would punish Republicans — and whose website acknowledges its mission of “shaping how Americans think about and act toward immigration now and in the future” — is unabashedly in favor of expansive immigration.

From the Carnegie Corporation offices on Madison Avenue in New York, the U.S. immigration landscape is one of boundless opportunity. One searches in vain through Carnegie records — publications, public statements, grant announcements — for a discussion of immigration’s complexity, of its capacity to create winners and losers, of its social costs as well as its economic and cultural benefits.

“At this moment of national conversation, the Corporation expects to be on the front lines of this important national debate about the evolving relationship between immigration and our democratic American society. Our grantees are asking the questions, conducting the research, and working with men and women who want an immigration system that is worthy of Emma Lazarus’s fabled words at the base of the Statue of Liberty:

It is ironic that while claiming to be engaged in probing, cutting-edge research, Carnegie declares that it aims to fulfill the vision of a sonnet written in 1883, when the U.S. population was about 53 million, slightly more than one-sixth its current size. It is remarkable that a philanthropic institution with the resources at Carnegie’s disposal and the mission Carnegie claims would ignore the conclusions of the Hesburgh and Jordan commissions as well as the voluminous research that supports a more prosaic view of recent immigrant history and a more cautious approach to federal immigration policy.56 It is a loss for American democracy that Carnegie’s simplistic and ideologically bound approach to immigration policy has justified its funding of campaigns to smear those who dare to suggest more cautious immigration policy.

The Carnegie determination to ignore unpleasant realities is highlighted by a column written by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. Citing the Lazarus verse, Krugman said, “I’m proud of America’s immigrant history, and grateful that the door was open when my grandparents fled Russia.” Krugman said he is “instinctively, emotionally pro-immigration.” Then he addressed a harsh set of facts:

“While immigration may have raised overall income slightly, many of the worst-off native-born Americans are hurt by immigration — especially immigration from Mexico. Because Mexican immigrants have much less education than the average U.S. worker, they increase the supply of less-skilled labor, driving down the wages of the worst-paid Americans … modern America is a welfare state, even if our social safety net has more holes in it than it should — and low-skill immigrants threaten to unravel that safety net.”57

Funding Attacks, Poisoning Debate

The campaign by CIR advocates to demonize restrictionist organizations took shape in late 2007, following the failure of the comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate.

A New York Times story on the efforts of NumbersUSA to mobilize opposition to the CIR bill in the Senate noted that the group “tracked every twist and turn of the bill. Its members flooded the Senate with more than a million faxes, sent through the organization’s website.”58

The grassroots uprising stunned many Senate offices and was a major influence in the bill’s defeat.

The Times quoted Frank Sharry, then the executive director of the National Immigration Forum, acknowledging that NumbersUSA worked for civil discussion of a volatile issue. Sharry said the group’s executive director, former journalist Roy Beck, “takes people who are upset about illegal immigration for different reasons, including hostility to Latino immigrants, and disciplines them so their message is based on policy rather than race-based arguments or xenophobia.”

But armed with a $6.5 million Carnegie grant to America’s Voice, the organization he founded in 2008, Sharry went on the attack. Carnegie reported that the grant would finance “a communication effort designed to more directly challenge those who oppose immigration reform.”59 Mannion later wrote that, “Its mission is to engage America in a high-level conversation around the issue of fixing a broken immigration system.”60

What resulted was something less than high-level. America’s Voice waged an expensive campaign of smear and character assassination directed most explicitly at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, but also against NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies.

The centerpiece of the campaign was a December 2007 declaration by the Southern Poverty Law Center that it had decided to designate FAIR as a “hate group.”

As a CIS investigative report would later show, the “hate group” designation was a made-to-order smear based upon spurious evidence.61 It was announced shortly before the smear campaign began. The campaign was a cooperative effort of several Carnegie grantees: America’s Voice, the National Council of La Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Media Matters. They joined arms in calling upon the public to “Take the hate out of the immigration debate.”62

America’s Voice then amplified the message. Together with the Center for New Community — another Carnegie grantee — and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), America’s Voice purchased full-page ads in Politico and Roll Call, newspapers directed at Capitol Hill insiders.

“The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is Designated a HATE GROUP by the Southern Poverty Law Center,” said one ad, using red capital letters to highlight “FAIR” and “HATE GROUP.” It added, “Extremist groups, like FAIR, shouldn’t write immigration policy.” It urged supporters to press the message in the House and Senate — “Tell Congress, Don’t Meet with FAIR!”63 To highlight the disgrace it intended to inflict, America’s Voice website noted: “Other SPLC ‘hate groups’ include: the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party, and the Aryan Nations.”64

Tom Barry, director of the TransBorder Project at the liberal Center for International Policy65 has sharply criticized the campaign’s attempt to persuade journalists to shun not only FAIR but also, NumbersUSA and CIS.

Wrote Barry, “One wonders just whom the media is supposed to talk to about the restrictionist cause if reporters are to reject these three influential institutes as illegitimate.”66

Barry added these criticisms of the campaign:

“It’s a strategy that has diverted the attention, energy, and financial resources of the pro-CIR immigrant-rights forces from the pressing challenge of articulating a more persuasive and coherent immigration reform message — one that speaks to the concerns of U.S. citizens and legal residents about the impact of the unauthorized immigrant population and of new immigrant flows on the nation’s general welfare.”67

“It’s time for NCLR, America’s Voice, Center for American Progress, Center for New Community, and the foundations that have supported this smear campaign to disassociate themselves from such character-assassination tactics. The immigration debate has been ill served by such tactics, and the reputation of the liberal immigration reform movement needlessly damaged.”68

“Trying to stick a label of extremism on institutes that have massive memberships, good relations with the media, and good standing on the Hill is a measure of how desperate and isolated the pro-immigration forces that have embraced this strategy really are.”69

Despite such criticism, the Carnegie Corporation shows no sign of displeasure with America’s Voice or its use of the foundation’s money. At the end of 2010, Carnegie announced that it had given America’s Voice another grant, this one for $2 million.70 The announcement included this rationale:

“In the two years since its founding, America’s Voice Education Fund has moved quickly to fill the need for faster and edgier communications work in the immigration reform movement and its innovative strategies have helped to influence media coverage of the issue in new ways. Working with state, local, and national advocates, America’s Voice now serves as the voice of the immigration reform movement, capable of going on the offense and creating the political space for good policy development and implementation.”

As this report has shown, in its determination to create the political space for the immigration reforms it seeks, America’s Voice has aggressively and maliciously sought to smear those with competing ideas. Carnegie Corporation, whose president has pledged to “augment the sources of knowledge” in order to “enrich discussion and debate” has financed blatant efforts to narrow the sources of knowledge and constrict public discussion of immigration reform.

The Center for New Community

It is certainly true that the volatile national debate on immigration has been debased, particularly on talk radio and the Internet by insulting commentary and dehumanizing criticism of illegal immigrants. These attacks often stir resentment not only against illegal immigrants, but also against legal immigrants and some native-born citizens of the United States. They have no place in civil society. They poison the environment for debate that is vital in a democracy.

By the same token, Carnegie-funded campaigns have blurred the lines between those whose actions can fairly be called racist or nativist and those who seek civil discussion of a complex issue. This tactic uses ad hominem attacks to divert attention from the serious, substantive issues raised by immigration researchers. It is as destructive of reasoned dialogue as is the charge by extremist restrictionists that immigration advocates are agents of “reconquista,” the alleged plot of Mexican nationalists to retake control of land ceded by Mexico to the United States in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

The Center for New Community (CNC) has been particularly aggressive in the smear campaign, which it claims to be waging in the name of tolerance. It attacks the restrictionist organizations as white nationalists whose concerns are rooted in bigotry.

The CNC is led by the Rev. David Ostendorf, a minister of the United Church of Christ. Ostendorf’s broad-brush proclamations charge that groups opposed to the current scale of legal and illegal immigration are rooted in bigotry.

“The rhetoric of this movement has been just vile and vicious and has pitted neighbors against neighbors,’’ Ostendorf said in late 2007. “There’s no question in our mind that it’s an extremist movement. It’s grounded in hate. It’s grounded in intolerance.”71

Ostendorf made that comment at the National Press Club two weeks after CNC received a $200,000 Carnegie grant that, according to Geraldine Mannion, was intended “specifically for its faith-based network that focuses on bridging differences among those who oppose immigration and those who support immigration.” The Press Club event announced “the kickoff of the Campaign for a United America,” whose promotional material described it as “a national effort to counter the growing anti-immigrant movement.”

Despite Mannion’s claim, CNC has shown no interest in building bridges with organizations that favor reduced immigration. To the contrary, since at least 2006, it has conducted a campaign called “Nativism Watch,” which monitors news accounts that quote CIS, NumbersUSA, or FAIR and seeks to persuade the reporters to cut off contact with the restrictionist groups. Ironically, it is part of a CNC initiative dubbed “Building Democracy,” which claims that it “works to counter emerging threats to civil and human rights.”72

Nativism Watch swung into action in early 2010, after the Arizona Republic published a story quoting Steven Camarota, the CIS director of research. Camarota told the newspaper that Arizona “has had a very bad job market and it has had a very robust enforcement scene” that caused many illegal immigrants to return to their home countries.73

A Nativism Watch representative called on the paper to shun CIS, claiming it was a white nationalist organization that had no place in the national discussion. The accusation was based solely on the fact that John Tanton, a Michigan ophthalmologist whose environmental activism and concerns about population growth led him to immigration activism, helped to found CIS in 1985.74

Rather than offering evidence of bigotry or nativism in CIS publications or statements, CNC pointed to decades-old comments by Tanton. While Nativism Watch distorted the context of these statements, some can fairly be criticized as insensitive or as needlessly provocative warnings about the potential consequences of immigration. But the statements were his own and had nothing to do with CIS. They cannot be used in an honest critique of the work of CIS, where Tanton has never had any position or influence.

When CIS learned of the effort by Nativism Watch volunteer Chris Fleischman, the author of this report invited him for coffee. Fleischman responded: “I must decline your offer, because I do not wish to associate myself with someone who is connected with CIS. The organization has troubling ties to white nationalism, and I do [not] have time to give to anyone in that position. If you leave your position with the John Tanton Network, I would be happy to talk with you and treat you to a beverage.”75

Mannion noted in early 2011 that Carnegie does not fund Nativism Watch.76 Indeed, the 2007 grant to CNC was scheduled to be completed by the spring of 2009.

But the Campaign for a United America that Carnegie clearly funded was a parallel effort to delegitimize restrictionist organizations. And it clearly extended the work of Nativism Watch. When Carnegie awarded the grant, it said the grant was intended to support the CNC’s “national media campaign, rooted in the center’s strategic research of polarizing anti-immigrant groups, to educate the public about their activities, partners, donors, and goals.”77

CNC and the Weeden Foundation

The CNC has also attacked the environmentally focused Weeden Foundation for financially supporting the work of FAIR, CIS, and Numbers USA. The foundation’s support is rooted in its mission statement, which declares a commitment “to address the adverse impact of growing human populations and overuse of natural resources on the biological fabric of the planet.”78

Foundation Executive Director Don Weeden, who has a long history as an environmental activist, has written that the immigration-driven growth rate of the U.S. population “exacerbates most environmental problems, and works against important gains made in smart growth, energy efficiency, pollution control, and protection of wild nature.”79

Weeden, who serves on the NumbersUSA board, recently joined other conservation leaders to establish an organization that seeks to engage the public on the environmental consequences of rapid population growth, which in the United States in recent decades has been caused primarily by immigration. Called “Apply the Brakes,” the group traces its growth to concerns about “the decades-long retreat of U.S. environmental organizations from addressing domestic population growth as a key issue in both domestic and global sustainability.”80

Nativism Watch responded with a video that accuses the Weeden Foundation of advocating “the greening of bigotry” and waging “green war on immigrants.”81

One of the other members of Apply the Brakes, Colorado State University philosophy professor Philip Cafaro is the co-author of a paper that makes the environmental case for reducing immigration. The paper presents the case that the “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation sponsored by Senators Edward Kennedy and John McCain in 2006 could have led to “nearly tripling America’s population to over 850 million people by 2100.”82

In response, Ostendorf went on the attack. “While Apply the Brakes leaders argue that their concerns are based solely on the ecological impacts of a growing population, some of the group’s political alignments and associations with nativists and white nationalists suggest otherwise,” he declared. These “political alignments” were another reference to John Tanton.83

This tactic is characteristic of CNC and America’s Voice. Rather than engaging on the substance of concerns about the fiscal, job market, social, or demographic effects of decades of mass immigration, they engage in guilt by association. Rather than focusing on substance, they divert the discussion with ad hominem attacks.

The 2007 Carnegie grant to CNC, issued shortly after the Senate rejected CIR legislation, was part of the broad campaign among Carnegie grantees to assail the character and integrity of their opponents.

Conclusion

To what extent does nativism drive concerns about immigration? The foremost American scholar of nativism, the eminent historian John Higham, criticized the tactic of labeling restrictionist concerns as rooted in nativism.

Indeed, Higham, who died in 2003, shared many of those concerns. In the mid 1980s he wrote that “the growth of the world’s population and its increased mobility made regulatory action unavoidable. In the modern world free migration would result in excessive population displacement toward countries with high wages or political stability.”84

The Carnegie Corporation’s failure to acknowledge such concerns as legitimate or to support the work of those who examine them in a balanced way is a loss for American democracy. Carnegie compounds the problem by funding those who demonize restrictionist organizations and seek to have them expelled from the forum of public debate. Such partisanship is a radical departure from its mission and its professed purpose.

Perhaps Carnegie should follow the counsel offered by television’s Jon Stewart in the fall of 2010 as he mobilized his “Rally to Restore Sanity” in Washington and lamented the increasing ugliness and hostility of political discussion. Noting that in recent years, the most militant critics of both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama have distorted photographs to present both men as Adolf Hitler, Stewart suggested that an appropriate sign to bring to the rally would read: “You and I disagree, but I’m pretty sure you’re not Hitler.”85

Added Stewart, in a plea to intolerant partisans on all sides, “Take it down a notch for America.”

Andrew Carnegie, who envisioned that the foundation would encourage “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding,” might agree. The Carnegie Corporation would honor that mandate by promoting constructive and creative dialogue across the great divide of immigration policy. Its deviation from its mission undermines the democratic discussion it was meant to serve.

2008 — Center for American Progress — “Under the leadership of Esther Olavarria, former Counsel to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), and in collaboration with other leading immigrant policy groups both in Washington, DC, and from around the country, the center will convene academics and policy analysts in a series of roundtables to develop and consider productive new policy recommendations for comprehensive immigration and integration reform.” — $50,000

2008 — American Immigration Council — “The Immigration Policy Center (IPC), the policy arm of the American Immigration Law Foundation, operates as a think tank researching and analyzing issues related to immigration and immigrants in America. Recognizing that the immigration debate will likely continue into the next administration and beyond, IPC will expand its research, communications, and coordination capacities … with the goal of stimulating reasoned and effective policymaking around immigrant policies.” — $250,000

2009 — Center for American Progress — “[T]he Center for American Progress, which is also launching a center-wide immigration project, will bring together leading stakeholders in the immigration policy debate to find common ground. CAP will coordinate and oversee the immigration reform policy work of key partners to identify, develop, and foster support for new ideas related to workable reforms.” — $2,400,000

2010 — National Immigration Forum — “Working across the political spectrum with stakeholders from faith, labor, African-American, immigrant, non-immigrant, and business communities, the forum represents a broad set of organizations involved in the immigration reform movement. With Corporation Support, the forum will continue this work and rapidly respond to emerging needs in the field if federal immigration reform moves forward.” — $1,500,000

Media Campaigns and Coverage

2007 — The Center for New Community — “The Center’s “Campaign for a United America will launch a national media campaign, rooted in the center’s strategic research of polarizing anti-imigrant groups, to educate the public about their activities, partners, donors and goals.” — $200,000

2007 — Cato Institute — “Jason Riley, an editorialist for the Wall Street Journal, will promote a book taking on the more common arguments by opponents of immigration and addressing the economic, political, and social ramifications of immigration in the United States.” — $25,000

2007 — Pacific News Service — “Throughout the immigrant advocacy field, there is growing recognition that ethnic media can play a vital role in both providing information on changes in immigration policies and in mobilizing ethnic audiences to become part of the policy debate … . New American Media is a nationwide editorial, marketing, and trade association of ethnic media organizations founded by the Pacific News Service, and it is one of the few groups in the country with the background, connections, and expertise to undertake outreach on immigrant issues to the ethnic media.” — $300,000

2008 — America’s Voice Education Fund — “Following the defeat of federal comprehensive immigration reform in 2007, leading immigrant advocates have created a multi-pronged public education campaign strategy for going forward. In response to a previous weakness in the movement—an inability to rapidly respond to anti-immigrant media messages and to put forward more positive messages about immigrants and their families — strategic communications capacity has emerged as a central component of the campaign ... . [America’s Voice Education Fund] will serve as the hub for developing strategic communications for the immigrant integration field.” Administered by Public Interest Projects.” — $6,500,000

2008 — Capitol News Connection — “The Corporation’s renewed support will enable CNC to deepen and enhance its investigative, analytical, and interactive reporting on the immigration debate, particularly during an election year and during the opening of a new administration and Congress.” — $200,000

2008—Media Matters for America—“Democracy is undermined when the media provides biased and inaccurate news and information….Media Matters will expand its monitoring, analyses, and correcting of misinformation on immigrant-related topics in the news.” — $50,000

2010 — Epidavros Project — “In an effort to educate the public about the history of the immigration reform movement … the Epidavros Project has produced a documentary series, ‘How Democracy Works,’ following the many actors that have been involved in this debate since 2001 … . With Corporation support, Epidavros will launch a public education campaign using an interactive website, coordinated press events, and broad dissemination of the documentary.” — $50,000

2010 — America’s Voice Education Fund — “In the two years since its founding, America’s Voice Education Fund has moved quickly to fill a need for faster and edgier communications work in the immigration reform movement, and its innovative strategies have helped to influence media coverage of the issue in new ways.” — $2,000,000.

2007 — Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund — “Particularly following the failure of the federal government to fix the broken immigration system, most immigrant rights struggles are now taking place at the state and local levels, such as in Hazelton, Penn.. There is a two-fold need in these communities — to challenge illegal policies and mandates that unfairly target immigrants through litigation, and to facilitate dialogue about the impact of these laws among immigrants, public officials, the media, and other members of their communities.” — $250,000

2007 — Four Freedoms Fund — “In the aftermath of the collapse of federal comprehensive immigration reform, immigrant integration policies now will be decided at the state and local level. There is thus both a great opportunity and a need to encourage better immigrant policies at a more local, community-based, grassroots level and build upward to broader integrative policies … . The fund’s grants encourage capacity building, policy development, advocacy training, and civic engagement; they also encourage collaboration and networking by supporting opportunities that unite immigrants and citizens in alliances to encourage better immigrant policies.” — $3,000,000

2007 — Center for Community Change — “Toward its civic participation work among immigrants and low-income voters in the states.” — $900,000

2008 — Police Executive Research Forum — “Much of the public policy debate about immigrants and immigration is now taking place at the state and local levels. One of the growing concerns emerging from these debates is whether local law enforcement should or should not enforce federal immigration laws in their localities. The Police Executive Research Forum … will document the challenges local communities face in response to heightened pressure on them to enforce federal immigration laws. The overall goal of the project is to understand and clarify the implications of having local law enforcement involved in federal immigration law.” — $350,000

2009 — National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials — “In the past year (NALEO) partnered with Univision, the National Council of La Raza, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) on the Ya Es Hora campaign, a coordinated effort that aimed to spur millions of eligible Latinos to naturalize and then vote. In the coming years, NALEO will continue and expand its civic engagement work in Latino communities.” — $500,000

2009 — Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund — “The national debate on immigration reform … spurred certain punitive, enforcement-only policies targeting immigrants and mandating that local law enforcement officials enforce immigration law. There is, as a result, a need to protect legal immigrants and citizens against discriminatory practices and civil rights violations brought on by certain anti-immigrant ordinances. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), a Corporation grantee with a history defending the rights of Latinos and other immigrants, will increase the amount of resources dedicated to protecting immigrants’ rights.” — $300,000

2010 — Center for Community Change — “The Center for Community Change works with immigrant organizations and gives them the necessary skills to participate in public policy activities. The grant supports the work of the CCC and allows them to continue their efforts with grassroots organizations and help immigrants advance in life and advocate for their own needs.” — $1,000,000

* Source: Carnegie.org website. Information within quotation marks is excerpted from Carnegie’s description of the grants.

2 In January 2011, public radio station WAMU in Washington, D.C., said it would sever its relationship with Capitol News Connection (CNC). The move followed by four months a story in the Washington Post that reported on what it called a possible conflict of interest involving WAMU executive Mark McDonald: “WAMU’s connection to Capitol News Connection is closer than might be apparent. …. [T}he founder and chief executive of CNC’s parent company is also the wife of the WAMU executive charged with determining which programs the station airs ... the ties between the station and CNC suggest at least the appearance of a conflict .. . In this case, the station is purchasing programs from a company operated by McDonald’s wife, Melinda Wittstock, thus benefiting McDonald in the process. CNC, in turn, benefits from its presence on WAMU’s Enhanced Coverage Linking schedule. As one of the most popular stations in the Washington area and one of the largest public radio stations in the country, WAMU’s Enhanced Coverage Linking contract represents a powerful calling card for CNC, as the service markets its programs to other public stations around the country. CNC’s website even includes a promotional quote from Jim Asendio, Enhanced Coverage Linking news director and McDonald’s underling, calling it “irreplaceable and unmatched.” See Paul Fahri, “WAMU sends mixed signals about executive’s connections,” The Washington Post, September 7, 2011.

56 In the introduction to the final report of the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy, Rev. Hesburgh wrote “As important has immigration has been and remains to our country, it is no longer possible to say as George Washington did that we welcome all of the oppressed of the world, or as did the poet, Emma Lazarus, that we should take all of the huddled masses yearning to be free.” The report was submitted on April 30, 1981.

57 Paul Krugman, “North of the Border,” The New York Times, March 27, 2006.

58 Robert Pear, “A Million Faxes Later, a Little-Known Group Claims a Victory on Immigration,” The New York Times, July 15, 2007.

65 According to the Center for International Policy’s website, it was “founded in 1975, in the wake of the Vietnam War, by former diplomats and peace activists.” Its mission is: “Promoting a U.S. foreign policy based on international cooperation, demilitarization and respect for human rights,” http://ciponline.org/aboutus.htm.

71 Ostendorf statement at October 10, 2007, press briefing at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C., to announce the “kickoff of the Campaign for a United America.” The organization was described in publicity before the event as “a national effort to counter the growing anti-immigrant movement.” Author’s transcript and notes.

75 In a February 6, 2010, letter to the Vail Daily newspaper, Fleischman wrote that he was “disappointed” that the paper had published an article quoting Jessica Vaughan of CIS, which he described as “an extreme anti-immigrant group.” He added: “Although CIS portrays itself as a mainstream group, it is not. This Center was started in 1985 by the Federation for American Immigration Reform and white nationalist leader John Tanton. FAIR is listed as a hate group by the civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center.”

76 Mannion’s written response to CIS questions, relayed in an e-mail from Carnegie’s George Soule, January 14, 2010.

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization founded in 1985.
It is the nation's only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic,
fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States.